


Heart's Presages

by Gileonnen



Category: Richard II - Shakespeare
Genre: Hunting, M/M, PWP, Polyamory, Royalty in Compromising Positions, Suggestive Flautists, Thematic Closure, Yuletide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-24
Updated: 2009-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-05 05:44:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/38390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gileonnen/pseuds/Gileonnen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Richard's favourites swear fealty to their king.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heart's Presages

**Author's Note:**

  * For [angevin2](https://archiveofourown.org/users/angevin2/gifts).



They are boys together, the three of them--they go trapping together in the king's woods, and think themselves clever lads because the king is a boy scarcely older than they, and surely he would think it a marvelous lark to set snares along the hare-trails.

They swear that they will one day be knights, and steal a skinning knife so that they might seal their pact with blood. Their slick palms close hot on one another's, and in the moonlit darkness they meet one another's eyes. For the first time, they feel that they are men.

They grow to be men, with time. All boys do.

Green catches the king's eye first, of course, for Green is tall and fair and dresses above his station. He can charm mad melodies from a flute, his cheeks hollowed out with the effort of playing; the king wishes to speak with him in private, he says, and late that night Green returns to his mother's house with his eyes alight and his lips bruise-touched. The next morning, he says that he has been offered a place in the king's household, and where Green goes so go his friends.

Bagot is surprised to find that the king sweats, and sleeps, and even breaks wind. The king should be a creature of porcelain and glass, as ethereal and transcendent as a god; he should not whimper and tangle his fingers in Green's fair hair as the younger man stoops to nuzzle between the king's legs. He should not have a prick, as other men do; to conceive of the king with a prick is to conceive of Jesus without a cloth draped securely about his hips--of Green's lips taking in that length with a laugh and a lick, his fingers threaded with familiar ease through the king's soft nether hair--

\--when Bushy leans in to be kissed, Bagot seizes him by the shoulders and surfeits his desire.

The king has been half-melancholy and half-mad since the death of his wife (his first wife, his uncles decide, as though their nephew cannot choose for himself whether a match would be advantageous); it is widely whispered that he has been mad since the rising of Wat Tyler, but Bushy does not particularly credit the rumors. He does the king real service in recalling him to the material world's splendors, selecting rich cloth and wrought gold to adorn the royal chambers while the king is abroad in Ireland. He commissions saints' portraits with gold leaf shining bright from the halos; soon the faces of St. Catherine and St. Matthew peer from every hall, and John of Gaunt grumbles that they have become a house of bookkeepers to be so patronized.

His grumbling makes King Richard laugh, and his laughter is reward enough. The kisses that he lavishes on Bushy's neck that evening only sweeten his gratitude.

In the next year the king takes a wife, a sweet-faced French princess of nearly seven years. Green smirks all through the wedding, although Bagot elbows him and entreats him to be civil for all love. They cannot be threatened by a child; the king has chosen her not for her fine dark hair or her rosebud lips, but for her political usefulness. He does not go to her bed that night (and he would be a monster if he had, Bagot thinks), but instead asks his men to attend him in his chamber.

"No fruitful wedding night, this," Green laughs, his lips skimming slow down their sovereign's chest to latch on one rosy nipple. He breathes there, teasing, "Your majesty will get no princelings tonight--"

"Have we not princelings enough?" he asks, drawing Bagot down to kiss him. Their lips part readily against one another's; their tongues brush sweet as wine honey-laced. When Bagot cups his hand at Richard's neck, he can feel the steady, hot thrum of the pulse there.

"Only loyal servants," murmurs Bushy, who watches open-mouthed. His pupils are wide and dark, his hand curling at his own hip as though he seeks to test his restraint. His face is hot, and his breath comes sharp. "We're yours, my lord--"

Green's hand curls between Richard's legs, and the king cries out against Bagot's lips. "Ours," he gasps there; "Ours, for always--"

They seal the pact with kisses and cries, and it is as solemn an oath as a years-gone promise in blood.

* * *

They are no longer boys, they three, and neither is the king.

When Bolingbroke's force makes head at Ravenspurgh, Green puts away his flute, and Bushy kneels before his gold-touched saints. Between the Irish coast and London, Bagot is setting snares.


End file.
